Poems & Short Stories

  Maya gave an involuntary shake as that memory flashed in front of her. She remembered every small detail of that everyday ritual. How could she not! She used to get restless to see Satish and desperately wait for those magnolias he gave her. Jaya always envied her and she went all green-eyed looking at those magnolias in her hair. That was so childish of them, she thought. Nevertheless the memory gave a reason to put a smile on her face. That face which lost the path of smiles and embraced a perennial frown. With the letter on one hand, she got up to examine those magnolias that they planted it together. They were given by Satish’s aunt on his birthday and what did he do with that. He urged Maya to take it with her and when she gently rebuked him for giving his own birthday gift, he came along with her post school hours and planted it on his own. Robbed off all plausible excuses, she had to submit to him and his childlike requests. The bright little magnolias winked at her, swayi

  Once upon a time a frog Croaked away in Bingle Bog Every night from dusk to dawn He croaked awn and awn and awn Other creatures loathed his voice, But, alas, they had no choice, And the crass cacophony Blared out from the sumac tree At whose foot the frog each night Minstrelled on till morning night Neither stones nor prayers nor sticks. Insults or complaints or bricks Stilled the frogs determination To display his heart's elation. But one night a nightingale In the moonlight cold and pale Perched upon the sumac tree Casting forth her melody Dumbstruck sat the gaping frog And the whole admiring bog Stared towards the sumac, rapt, And, when she had ended, clapped, Ducks had swum and herons waded To her as she serenaded And a solitary loon Wept, beneath the summer moon. Toads and teals and tiddlers, captured By her voice, cheered on, enraptured: "Bravo! " "Too divine! " "Encore! " So the nightingale once more, Quite unus

  William Blake brought in usual naturalness (which was also one of the themes of that era) in this poem. A boy dons the hat of first-person and exhibits his boredom in the structured format of schooling. He prefers to explore in the wilderness, with the fragrance of the blooms, and with the chirping raga of feathered creatures or in the mountain wastelands.   He finds joy and comfort in the routine undertakings of the morning when he says in the first stanza   “I love to rise in the summer morning, the distant huntsman winding the horn and the skylark sings with me”.   The second stanza drives the joy away from the boy’s mood when he thinks about how he, along with his mates, will be forced to be observed under the cruel eye (which can mean a teacher in this parlance). And he doesn’t want that to happen. The boy stresses on the problems of formal learning and thinks that there is nothing that he cannot learn in the natural world. Schooling stifles innate imagination and joy of l